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Artist : Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985)
Title : Houle du virtuel (Virtual Wave )
Date : 1963
Collection: Grenoble, Musée des Beaux Arts.
As a prolific artist and painter paying no heed to convention, whether in society or art, Jean Dubuffet made non-savoir a principle with which to create a singular body of work, organised as successive series, the most significant of which will be exhibited in this retrospective.
The “first works” that Dubuffet listed as such, those produced as from 1942, showed the painter’s interest for children’s drawings, graffiti and outsider art. He coined French term for outsider art (“art brut”) in 1945 to designate the artistic production of people from outside the world of culture. He studied it and collected it diligently, seeking himself to reach this deconditioned state, in order to change the perspective put forward, his vision of things and the world.
Parallel to his painting career, he also wrote a founding declaration to explain his “anticultural positions”, also showing a preference for the company of writers rather than artists. The portrait of one of them, Dhôtel nuancé d’abricot, 1947, is emblematic of his renouncement of all aesthetic order: characteristic frontality, a clumsy hand, freewheeling use of colour and non-art materials. The series “Corps de Dames”, including the dazzling Métafizyx, 1950, empowered the artist to cross another line jeopardising figures in favour of painting, now the subject of the work.
Ever seeking out pictural inventions, Dubuffet illustrated his research in major series: “Matériologies”, such as the majestic Messe de Terre, 1959-1960, “Phénomènes”, a major set of lithographs produced from 1958 to 1963, “Paris Circus”, illustrated by the joyful Rue passagère, 1961, expressing the colourful bustling of the city. Then we come upon a vast series, “L’Hourloupe”, which introduced a whole new language, featuring shapes, some coloured in, some hatched, in a limited colour range (black, white, red, blue). “L’Hourloupe” was to occupy Dubuffet for twelve years, from 1962 to 1974.
The artist produced several other major series in the course of his career, such as the “Psycho-sites” and the “Mires”, with in particular the stunning, vigorously painted Cours des choses, 1983. Each time he reinvented a vision of the world calling perception into question, through to his ultimate series “Non lieux”, wrapping up a radical body of work, among the most audacious in art history in the 20th century.
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